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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28563486">Better Left Unsaid</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/theology/pseuds/theology'>theology</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Gen, Metahuman Jason Todd, Red Hood Jason Todd, Robin Jason Todd, Unhappy Ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:25:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,039</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28563486</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/theology/pseuds/theology</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce comes to the realization that his second son is a metahuman.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jason Todd &amp; Bruce Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>185</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Better Left Unsaid</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bruce doesn’t recognize Jason for what he is until the Mad Hatter shoots him in the side.</p><p>It is raining and dark and Bruce collapses on the rough asphalt next to Jason’s body. The Made Hatter lies unconscious and forgotten behind him.</p><p>It feels almost like the time that the Joker shot Dick, but worse — because Dick was shot in the arm, and Jason is so much smaller, and Dick had still been awake, and Jason doesn’t even have a pulse. Not for a very long moment.</p><p>A heartbeat jumps under his fingers, and Bruce almost sobs in relief. He doesn’t; he drags himself to his feet instead, cradling Jason’s body to his chest all the way to Leslie’s clinic, as if he can pretend to protect Jason at all when <em>Jason was shot standing right next to him</em>.</p><p>Leslie’s horror says more than enough. She takes Jason into her operating room and Bruce doesn’t see either of them for hours. When Leslie finishes her work, she gives him a severe dressing down, and Bruce can’t help but agree with her words. Jason will live, she says, if he can get through the night. She stresses that if strongly, and Bruce can never risk that if again.</p><p>Maybe Bruce can never stop being Batman, but maybe he can stop Jason from going down this path. Bruce already knows too well the damage that a bullet can do, and he can never let that happen to Jason.</p><p>As the red rays of dawn break over Gotham’s dark skyline, Jason blinks awake. “B-Bruce,” he says, his eyes still hazy.</p><p>“Jason,” Bruce says back. He touches Jason’s face, gentle, to make sure he’s really all there.</p><p>There’s a wide smile curling at Jason’s lips when he meets Bruce’s eyes, his eyes already beginning to sparkle with energy and his cheeks regaining their color.</p><p>“No need to look so down, B,” Jason says, like nothing ever happened. “We got our guy, didn’t we?”</p><p> </p><p>Bruce runs the genetic tests surreptitiously over the next couple of days, under the guise of making sure that Jason’s wound is healing well. Jason’s wound is, in fact, healing a little too well. All the tests come back conclusive: Congrats, it’s a Meta!</p><p>Jason himself doesn’t seem to register his fast recovery as unusual at all. Bruce suspects Leslie realized, but decided not to mention it. Alfred raises a single eyebrow when he sees Jason do an effortless flip just a few days after the misadventure, but keeps his silence. Bruce would worry he had gone crazy if he didn’t know he was right.</p><p>He finds himself at the crossroads of decision. Jason’s metagene is, frankly, not very strong. It is active just enough to stimulate healing at an increased rate, and even then it pales in comparison to most of the superpowered healing that Bruce has seen. Jason could go his whole life and never realize he was a meta.</p><p>And who is Bruce to complicate the situation by telling him?</p><p>Jason is a sweet kid with a good heart. Even more than that, he is Bruce’s son. Bruce can’t begrudge him for an ability he doesn’t even know he has, especially when it may very well have saved his life. Bruce isn’t necessarily happy to find out that Jason is a meta, but he is, perhaps, relieved. Jason’s power will give him that extra bit of protection that he might need, for the moments that Bruce might miss.</p><p>It is not a good thing, necessarily, but Bruce decides it is nothing to worry about.</p><p>This is what he lets himself think up until the point where he can no longer maintain the fantasy. Jason never does learn that he is a meta, but he does learn a few other things: he learns that pain is temporary, that broken bones are passing maladies, that it doesn’t matter how hard the hits connect because the consequences never last. He hurts both himself and his opponents too often.</p><p>Bruce learns something too — he learns that no meta, no matter inconspicuous they may appear, can ever understand the average human experience.</p><p>Without that vital sense of empathy for the pain of others, Jason starts to come down harder and harder on the villains he faces, turns cruel and careless with his violence. He doesn’t understand why Bruce goes so easy on criminals because he can’t comprehend the seriousness and permanency of certain injuries.</p><p>Bruce never knows for certain if Jason pushes Garzonas off that balcony, but he has his suspicions. Jason simply doesn’t understand other people, and vigilantes who can’t understand others make for the worst vigilantes of all. It’s for this reason that Bruce benches him temporarily. Maybe, just maybe, Jason can learn to approach situations intellectually rather than emotionally. If he can do that, Bruce would be more than happy to give him back Robin. He loves Jason, after all, still thinks he’s a sweet kid with a good heart.</p><p>Jason misunderstands everything.</p><p>When Bruce finds his body in the rubble, black and blue and bloody and asphyxiated to death, he still checks desperately for any sign of life.</p><p>It’s nothing like that long ago night against the Mad Hatter. The desert is a dry and empty expanse. The sun shines high and white in the sky.</p><p>Bruce never does find a pulse.</p><p> </p><p>“Put the gun down,” Bruce says.</p><p>It’s useless lip service; he’s just trying to stall the inevitable. Jason <em>(not dead Jason, all grown up Jason, nightmare from hell Jason)</em> just curls his lip into a sharp sneer and starts counting.</p><p>“One,” he says, and Bruce knows what he has to do.</p><p>“Two,” he says, and Bruce doesn’t want to, but…</p><p>“Thr—” Jason says and never gets to finish, because Bruce aims the Batarang for his son’s throat.</p><p>Jason goes down, violent and bleeding and silent, and hits the ground with a shocking stillness.</p><p>Bruce doesn’t go back to search through the rubble after the bomb goes off. It was only a single wound, he reassures himself, and a fairly unobtrusive one. It was not at all like a bullet or a crowbar.</p><p>It will be easy to heal for someone with Jason’s abilities, all things considered.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tried to make this as canon compliant as possible — comics referenced are Detective Comics #574, Batman #408, Batman #424, Batman #428, and Batman #650.</p><p>Reminder that Jason still doesn’t know that he’s a meta by the end of the story.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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